Improve complaint handling, to let customers know how long before their service would be repaired

"This is the strongest regulation we've ever had in this space," Ms Corbin said.

Modem testing part of plan

ACMA will also have funding to test the quality of new modems.

"The problem we've had with modems is we've had anecdotal evidence that the modems being sold are poor quality," Ms Corbin said.

ACMA analysis of complaints found that for the three months, to June 30, 2017 over 55 per cent of all network-related complaints were about the service quality and speed, and 44 per cent were about connection issues.

The response time by telcos was also concerning.

It took "complaints about faults up to 19 calendar days to resolve, whereas complaints about connection issues took up to 28 calendar days to resolve," ACMA reported.

It also "took up to 45 calendar days for customers to have their old voice and data services moved across to the network."

Superman would struggle to find a phone booth to change

The number of public phones has halved in 10 years. Payments for Telstra's pay-phones and home services will be phased out.

The number of public phones has halved in 10 years. Payments for Telstra's pay-phones and home services will be phased out.

ABC News: Niall Lenihan

Broadband guarantees were not the only announcement before Christmas.

The Government said it will also end the old Universal Services Obligation (USO) by 2020, and consult on a new guarantee of telephony services and broadband for every Australian.

The move will end funding for Telstra's public phone boxes, which were becoming scarce in regions anyway.

"If Superman was around, he would struggle to get changed anywhere, because they're virtually non-existent", said Brett Hosking, a farmer at Quambatook in northern Victoria and vice president of the Victorian Farmers Federation.

The end of the USO follows the Productivity Commission's inquiry, which found it was "costly and anachronistic".

The copper phone network is deteriorating, people are using mobiles and voice over internet.

But not everyone can use voice services on the NBN, because the Skymuster satellite was not designed to provide telephony.

Improvements on way

The Government said before the changes are rolled out in 2020;

broadband services will need to be available to 100 per cent of Australian premises

voice services are universally available

new service delivery arrangements are more cost effective than the existing USO contract

a new consumer safeguards framework is in place following a review and associated public consultation process.

Mr Hosking welcomed the shift, because it recognised there were many ways to get telephony services.

It can include new mobile services, and Mr Hosking said the new 5G service held a lot of promise.

Better broadband can lift production

He said if the data drought was fixed, farmers could make much more value from the produce.

"But I look at it like this; there's a lazy 15 to 20 per cent we could have added onto that, and the lack of investment in telecommunications in rural and regional areas has cost us that 15 to 20 per cent of $64 billion.

"That's unacceptable in Australia today, and we need to get farmers using that last piece of technology," he said.